Saturday, February 28, 2009

John Brophy at Voyageur's Night in Nova Scotia

An article on Nova Scotia Voyageur's night at the Halifax Moosehead's game last night. John Brophy coached the Voyageurs for three years, and was part of the ceremony.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

35th anniversary of the demise of the Suncoast Suns

Here's an entry from the Tampa Sports History blog from December 19, 2008 remembering the 35th anniversary of the demise of the Suncoast Suns, who were then in the Southern Hockey League... Suncoast Suns Burn Out 12/19/1973

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Reg Kent jersey retired; Montreal Canadiens at Johnstown Jets, 1951

Your morning Johnstown Jets reading....

* Read about the Johnstown Jets' Reg Kent having his #7 jersey retired by the Johnstown Cheifs

Lucky Seven by Mike Mastovich, Feb 11, 2009 Johnstown Tribune-Democrat.

Picture from the Tribune-Democrat: Galen Head, Reg Kent & Gene Peacosh.

* From yesterday's Johnstown Tribune-Democrat an article on the Montreal Canadiens visit to Johnstown. Rocket Richard scored 6 in a 10-2 victory in 1951.

Rocket’s visit part of city’s hockey history By Mike Mastovich, Feb 18, 2009 The Tribune-Democrat

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Suncoast Suns/ Jacksonvile Rockets articles online

I was just thinking last week that I needed a southern division newspaper source to help balance my perspective as I unearth the Eastern Hockey League. In my hobby as a hockey paleontologist I have a few sources for EHL articles to sift through...
* The NY Times, I can search online through my library. You can get the headlines and possibly first paragraph at...http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?srchst=p
* The Worcester Public Library has the Worcester Telegram for the 1954-55 season on microfilm. I spent a day getting all of the Worcester Warriors articles for that year. As I was leaving I realized they also have the evening paper, so a return visit is in order.
* The Washington Times, I can see online at http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/advancedsearch.html the headlines and maybe a brief blurb of the article. Then I can go up to Dartmouth library and find the articles on microfilm. This is good source for the 1950s when the Lions and Presidents played there.
* For a very reasonable fee http://NewspaperArchive.com has lots of papers from around the country, including the Syracuse papers, which are my best source at home. The Oneonta Star, Chester Times and Bridgeport CT papers have somewhat regular articles on the Comets, Ramblers and Blades respectively. There's also AP and UPI stories and scores in other papers.
* On my visits to Jersey, I check out the Camden Courier Post and Woodbury Times on microfilm for Devils articles.

The problem with most of these sources, along with mostly being northern papers, is that there is no way for you to see the articles.

So it was with great joy this morning that I discovered that the St. Petersburg Times and Evening Independent from the EHL era are searchable and viewable free of charge on-line via:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch
(The advanced search, and using timeline will help.)

Those papers covered the Suncoast Suns and prior to that the Jacksonville Rockets / Florida Rockets who also played some games at the Bayfront Center in St. Pete. They actually had some pretty good coverage. They usually have a picture with most articles, though some are blurred beyond recognition.

...and the best part is that for once, everyone can see the articles. So, especially if you are a fan of the Charlotte Checkers, Greensboro Generals, Nashville Dixie Flyers, Salem Rebels / Roanoke Valley Rebels, Knoxville Knights or particularly the Jacksonville Rockets or Suncoast Suns, enjoy!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

John Brophy inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame

John Brophy, perhaps the most famous EHLer ever, was inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame a few weeks ago. Here are links to some video and stories...

Here's the John Brophy ECHL Hall of Fame Induction Video .

Very nice article on John Brophy, and his induction into the ECHL Hall of Fame from the National Post.

Photo of John Brophy from the National Post.

An NHL.com story on Brophy prior to the induction.

http://www.ECHLHallofFame.com/

Monday, February 16, 2009

Welcome to TheEHL.blogspot.com

Welcome to TheEHL.blogspot.com!

I'm Tom T. and I was fortunate enough to have been able to see the old Eastern Hockey League Jersey Devils from the 1969-70 season until the league ended in 1973. I loved the old league, and in July 2008, I got the inspired idea to create a website for the EHL. There was definitely a need. When I saw that the name http://TheEHL.com was actually available (how many stupid webnames are unavailable?), I recognized that I was destined to do this.

One might certainly ask why we need a blog for a league that has been defunct for 36 years, especially when we already have a website. Two good reasons:
1) As I research old newspapers, I extract a lot of data that in its raw form is probably not terribly readable. It's cool to have the game scores and box scores, but that data needs a voice to bring it to life. The blog should allow me to do that.
2) There's a lot more EHL current events than you might think. The blog format allows me to dash off a quick update, that you can see in your particular RSS feed (I use Google homepage myself - you can use the "Subscribe to... Posts" button on the right to add this), without me having to e-mail the TheEHL.com Mailing List to death. This became obvious when John Brophy was inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame last month. By the time I had a chance to get an e-mail out with all of the info in it, it was only a couple of days ahead of time, which probably precluded anyone jumping in a car to go see John get inducted. With the blog, I could make a quick note when I see it and a bunch of updates as I get them - rather than 5 or 6 e-mails.

The blog is part of what I envision as a 3-pronged EHL website...Site, Blog, Message Boards. The latter is so that we can communicate with each other and build an EHL community sharing our memories. I actually had EHL boards for awhile, but I wasn't happy with the quality, and they were frankly taking up all of the time I wanted to use getting http://TheEHL.com up and running. When they crashed, I took them down. I'll be looking for better boards, but it may be a while as I have a few things I'd like to accomplish - like get some of the great stuff people have sent me up on the site first.

Well, that's quite enough for my first post.

Thanks to all of you for helping keep hockey history alive 36 years later.

Don't forget to add this to your Google homepage. (There's probably other ways to get notified of updates, but I'm new to this.)

- Tom T.